Some things about Heidi

My name is Heidi Sacha Bond. I was born on July 11, 1976.
Pardon me while I stop for a moment and perform some rather pointless numerology. 7 and 11 are
both lucky numbers. This is clear because they're both prime. 1976 isn't a prime--more's the
pity--but it is relatively prime with 7 and 11, and so I conclude that it's about as good as
prime. Thank heavens I wasn't born in February. Since I was born on days which are particularly
lucky, at least in some typical calendar, I conclude that I'm the luckiest person I've ever met
(note: several logical steps missing. Ignore these). This off-hand conclusion is supported by
the fact that I've always gotten everything I've needed. Not always everything I've wanted (I
think that would be particularly unlucky, frankly), but everything I've needed.

Having
established the good fortune to which my fortuitous birth entitles me, I can go on.

I was born
the sixth of six children. A few years later, I became the sixth of seven children. The number of
kids in our family is actually open to debate. The children in our family claim that there are
either nine (or ten) children in our family, some of whom have been tragically lost to us. Mary
was eaten at a tender age by lions at Lion Country Safari (a now defunct Disney Adventure). Susan
was flushed down the toilet as a mere babe by my older brother. Now, if you ask my parents, Mary
and Susan never existed. That's okay. The kids know the truth. Mom and Dad were just too
traumatized to bring themselves to admit what happened. Of course, there's Richard. The younger
kids claim that Richard ran away to join the Army at the age of nine to escape my older brother's
regimentation. The older kids scoff at this idea, claiming that Richard never existed. They're
traumatized, too.

So I am in fact the ninth child out of a family of ten, seven of whom
are still with us. Clear?

Now, some of you are doing a double take. Richard joined the Army
at the age of nine to escape regimentation? That can't possibly make sense. Well, it can. You
see, my oldest brother also had an army. We did jumping jacks at his behest. Sometimes hundreds
of them. When we were really really young. We stood at attention, and he smacked us to improve
our posture. If you cried, you washed his door with a toothbrush. Your toothbrush.

I
have vivid memories of us going on a hike in the mountains when we were younger. He had us
marching along the trail, and he barked orders at us. At one point, I remember him bellowing,
"Enjoy scenery!" to which we responded, "Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy" in a flat monotone.

Now you may
be wondering how my older brother got to be like this. I suppose a word is in order about my
parents. I have no wish to malign my parents. In fact, they're great. It's not quite fair to say
that they drove us crazy; but I don't think I was born into sanity. I know, I know. Everyone says
this about their parents. So I think a succinct example of the depths of my parents, uh,
other-mindedness can be provided. When we were sick, my parents wrote us notes excusing us from
school. Now this is quite normal. However, the sorts of notes my parents wrote were not.

Please excuse Heidi's absence yesterday. She was sick (of school).

Heidi was sick
yesterday. Sincerely, my mother. Yes, my mom signed the note "my mother". When the
teacher asked me if my mom really wrote the note, I pointed out that I wasn't stupid enough
to do that on my own.

Then there was the note that was completely unobjectionable in
content, but written in a spiral. Going around and around and around, so you had to turn the paper
to read it.

And so on...

There are other stories. My housemates particularly enjoy
the story of the pumpkin pies and the blue bread. I don't think I've told
many people about fudge
and blue bread. There's a horrible story involving maggots which still gives me the cold shivers
down my back. I summarize the first seventeen years of my life thusly: I have a weird family.
You think you have a weird family. Everybody thinks they have a weird family. Trust me.
My family will out weird yours any day of the week.

I got my undergraduate degree from Florida
State University. I majored in math and chemistry. Somehow or other, I managed to complete the
requirements for these degrees with some semblance of grace.

I should say a word about the
process of getting my undergrad degree. I was poor. I was really poor. I realize there
are people who were even worse off than me; those people were the ones who were supporting people
besides themselves. For the last year of my undergrad career, I lived on betwen $350 to $400 a
month. This really colors my view of money; to this day, I can't order a sandwich without
thinking that with that five bucks I could buy two containers of oatmeal.

While I was poor, I also really liked fiddling with computers. During a temporary upsurge in my
finances, I had built my own computer. I wanted, oh how I wanted, to upgrade it. To do anything
to fiddle. Alas. It's hard to upgrade your computer on a budget of $5 a month. So I started
messing with software. At this point I freely admit that I pirated a bunch of stuff off of friends
first. But the novelty wore off, and I wanted more upgrades. I overclocked my machine. And that
wasn't enough. So one day, I installed Linux. Gradually, I began using it more and more....

Okay, back to the main story (although that is the main story, just not yet). Here is Heidi,
majoring in math and chemistry. Somehow or other, I managed to complete the requirements for these
degrees with some semblance of grace. I finished, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.
Interesting jobs for people who like math and hate labwork are few and far between. Except, ding
ding ding! Brilliant idea! I decided to do theory. No labs. No experiments to mess up. All
math and computers. Yay! So I went to Berkeley and ended up working for David Chandler, doing
theoretical statistical mechanics for a few years.

Yeah. Then basically I got bored. I mean, there's a lot more to it than that, but here's the
essential problem. I went to grad school because I didn't want any of the stupid jobs you could
get with a Bachelor's degree. Then I realized I didn't want any of the stupid jobs I could get
with a PhD. A PhD is a lot of work if you don't really feel like it, and besides, I hated,
absolutely hated, talking about my research. Every time it happened I felt worse and worse, and
stupider and stupider. And the process seemed to be exponential. Didn't take a genius to figure
out that there was a problem. Plus, as I mentioned, I was bored.

But I didn't want to run away. I saw too many people doing that--taking any out they could get
from graduate school, because they wanted out that badly. So I stuck around for a while and
thought in the back of my mind about what I wanted out of life (and what I didn't want).